7 of My "Favorite" Things: From the Kinks to Queen

It's been awhile since "10 of My "Favorite Things: From ABBA to John Lennon," so here's a reminder what this is all about: These are my favorite songs by random favorite artists alphabetically organized by random favorite artist. Since picking favorites can be such an impossible task, I've made my criteria simple: Were I on my death bed with only five minutes to live, which song by each act would I want to hear?

Yeah, yeah, I know: Music would probably be the last thing on my mind. When my life has flashed before my eyes in the past, there's been no melody or beat (unless you count my heartbeat accelerating). But every key moment in life, including the inevitable death scene, deserves an awesome soundtrack.

The Kinks "Autumn Almanac" I spent decades swooning over "Tired of Waiting for You," before I discovered a trove of late '60s Kinks classics that were probably too British for the American Top 10. I may never again sit through "You Really Got Me" when instead I can listen to "Sunny Afternoon," "Till the End of the Day" and "Autumn Almanac," the archest of the bunch and a complete non-charter in the States. But then despite my general distaste for tea, draughts and royals, I've always been a staunch Anglophile who thinks the British invasion may have been the best thing ever to happen to American rock & roll.

Linda Ronstadt "You're No Good" Her only No. 1 single contains the best outro in the history of recorded music, and it's musical symbiosis at its finest. The rest of the song would be merely well-sung revivalist rock without that outro, which, in turn, wouldn't be nearly so stunning if the rest of the song didn't build up to it. The late Andrew Gold really earned his paycheck with this one.

The Moody Blues "Question" The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is such a joke. How could Joan Jett and the Blackhearts get in before The Moody Blues even score a measly nomination? The greatest, if not the biggest, Moody Blues hit (No. 21, 1970) kind of sounds like several songs playing at the same time, and somehow the band makes it work. That's the sort of musical genius that should get folks into the Hall at least in their first two and a half decades of eligibility.

Neil Diamond "Crackin' Rosie" The horn riff that kicks it off has always sounded to me like an announcement that morning has broken -- not the Cat Stevens song, the time of day…my favorite time of day. Though the lyrics are clearly set at the start of the evening (and Neil is actually singing about red red wine, the titular subject of another of his classic compositions and one of my least favorite ways to get a buzz), "Rosie" is so 6am euphoria. If I weren't such a morning person, maybe I'd be writing about "Love on the Rocks" here instead. I've been dying to do "Rosie" on a karaoke night for years. I'd better put that at the top of my bucket so list I can die listening to Neil singing about it in peace.

OMD "Souvenir" After they crank it on my death bed, they can play it on repeat at my funeral party.

Prince "Mountains" My friend Zena and I were recently talking about how much we love Parade, Prince's 1986 soundtrack for the film Under the Cherry Moon, which, incidentally, my mother bought me on vinyl for my birthday that year. I'd put it right up there with Sign o' the Times as his best long-form work. And this underrated single from it whose off-kilter production made the vinyl sound like it had been left out in the heat for too long? Unlike most of Prince's other '80s singles from "Little Red Corvette" on, I haven't heard it nearly enough. (Watch and listen here.)

Queen "Body Language" I'm not saying I love it more than "You're My Best Friend" or "A Kind of Magic" or "Under Pressure," but if I could only listen to one Queen track one more time before I croak... I've been addicted to that bass line (like a drug, like a drug, to quote Kylie Minogue, who once called an entire album -- her best one -- Body Language) since 1982. Look at me, I've got a case of "Body Language."

10 Things I Want That I Knew I Wouldn't Get for Christmas This Year...

...and probably wouldn't have even if I were one to do Christmas or gift exchanges.

1. A round-trip plane ticket to Ethiopia or Morocco -- one of them is next on my to-go-to list -- and a lifetime guarantee to be seated in Premium Economy or higher on every Qantas flight. Oh, and a lifetime guarantee to never have to fly any airline other than Qantas.

2. A dog.

3. The perfect man (see example above). Not perfect perfect -- just perfect for me: intelligent, funny, well-traveled, with a car (because I'm still afraid to drive on the left) and good looks that weren't labored over in the gym, at the salon, in the bathroom mirror or under the knife.

4. A box set (on mp3) of every Casey Kasem American Top 40 countdown from the '70s.

5. Unlimited WiFi for life.

6. A five-year rest from Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and the Kardashians.

7. New diva albums that I've actually been waiting for, from Kate Bush, Sade, Shara Nelson, Everything But the Girl, Tracey Thorn solo, Billie Ray Martin and Shania Twain.

8. An invitation to the Oscars (and a nomination to go with it?).

9. My own personal driver like the one Big had on Sex and the City.

10. The one that got away.

Madonna "Addicted (The One That Got Away)"



On the bright side, I have my health, my words, my friends and thanks to one of them -- take a bow, Zena! -- enough Tend Skin to last me another few years abroad. Come to think of it, I couldn't seriously ask for anything more.

Throwback Christmas: Santa and Me Through the Years

You'll Never Guess Which Hits Were Their Biggest!

I have theory (yes, another one): The more hits a classic act has had, the more likely the biggest one is to be something totally unexpected.

Take one of the greatest hitmakers of all time. "Hey Jude" spent more weeks (9) at No. 1 than any other Beatles single, but is it anyone's favorite Beatles song? Does anyone consider "Hey Jude" synonymous with the band? The Beatles racked up a number of signature early, mid- and late-period songs, and I wouldn't list "Hey Jude" among them.

Now consider ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. His longest-running post-Beatles No. 1 wasn't "Band on the Run" or "Silly Love Songs" or any of his other '70s radio staples. It was "Ebony and Ivory," his 1982 duet with Stevie Wonder that ruled Billboard's Hot 100 for seven weeks, which is as long at the top as the No. 1 runs of Wonder's "Superstition," "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "You Haven't Done Nothin'," "I Wish" and "Sir Duke" combined.

Here are 11 other superstars with surprise biggest hits.

Bob Marley Believe it or not, not one of the reggae icon's iconic singles ever made it into the U.S. Top 40. Not "No Woman, No Cry," "One Love" or "Is This Love," all of which were Top 10 UK hits. Marley's only Hot 100 entry ever was "Roots, Rock, Reggae," which peaked at No. 51 in 1976 and despite its lack of Marley classic status, ranks among his finest work.

Bee Gees "Staying Alive" was the trio's disco signature, but "Night Fever" spent five more weeks at No. 1. Eight weeks on top isn't such a big deal these days, but in the '70s, it was virtually unheard of.

Depeche Mode Quick, name a DM song! Chances are you cited "Just Can't Get Enough" (which didn't even chart in the U.S.) or "People Are People" (No. 13), not the band's lone U.S. Top 10, "Enjoy the Silence," which climbed to No. 8 in 1990.

Donna Fargo She went down in history for "The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.," but "Funny Face" brought the '70s country superstar her greatest chart success. While both hit No. 1 on the country side, Fargo's signature song peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100, six rungs below the peak Top 10 spot of "Funny Face."

Duran Duran If you lived through the '80s, you definitely remember the band's two U.S. No. 1's ("The Reflex" and "A View to a Kill"), but you'd be forgiven for thinking that "Hungry Like the Wolf" (No. 3) or the non-U.S.-charting "Girls on Film" were bigger. I still can't believe they weren't.

Elton John Even if you don't count "Candle in the Wind 1997," which was a monster by association (with Princess Diana's untimely death), the Elton single that spent the most weeks at No. 1 in the U.S. wasn't either of the two arguably most associated with him, neither of which even went Top 5: "Your Song" (No. 8) and "Rocket Man" (No. 6). It was -- surprise! -- "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," his duet with Kiki Dee that spent four weeks at the Hot 100 summit in 1976 and was the No. 2 Billboard single of that year. Curiously, though Elton is most highly regarded for slower, more contemplative '70s songs like "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Tiny Dancer," with the exception of his cover of The Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," his No. 1 '70s hits ("Crocodile Rock," "Bennie and the Jets," "Philadelphia Freedom," "Island Girl" and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart") were all uptempo.

Fleetwood Mac "Dreams" was the band's only U.S. chart-topper, but it's not even the most highly regarded Stevie Nicks-penned FM song, an honor that would more likely go to "Rihannon" (No. 11), "Sara" (No. 7) or the non-single "Landslide."

Gordon Lightfoot It was going to be toss-up between him and John Lennon, but since I vividly remember "(Just Like) Starting Over" being massive in the aftermath of Lennon's 1980 death, I can believe it was bigger than "Imagine" (No. 3). I'm surprised "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" and not Lennon's solo signature wasn't his other No. 1, but "Starting Over" makes that a moot point in this post. Which brings me to Gordon Lightfoot. "Sundown," the singer-songwriter's only U.S. No. 1, is a fantastic song, but am I the only one who would have expected "If You Could Read My Mind," which was resurrected as a '90s dance hit by Stars on 54, to have been bigger?

Janet Jackson I remember "That's the Way Love Goes" being huge in 1993, eight-weeks-at-No.-1 huge. But is it the first song anyone thinks about when they think about Miss Jackson-if-you're-nasty?

Madonna "Holiday" never made the Top 10 on Billboard's Hot 100; "Material Girl" stalled in the runner-up slot; and "Into the Groove" was never even a U.S. single. The Madonna song that spent one more week at the top than "Like A Virgin" (seven) was a now-all-but-forgotten ballad written by Babyface. When is the last time you heard "Take a Bow" (not the Rihanna No. 1 of the same title)?

Van Morrison The fantastic "Domino" (No. 9, 1970) bested his signature "Brown Eyed Girl" by one notch. Who said Americans have poor taste in music? Well, I did, but "Domino" is proof that they occasionally get it right.

5 Random Thoughts I Had After Watching "Still Alice"

1. Have you ever gotten so drunk at a party that you couldn't remember your address to give to the taxi driver on your way home? If Julianne Moore hasn't, she must know exactly how it feels. While watching her performance as a college professor struggling with a rare form of Alzheimer's that unexpectedly strikes otherwise vibrant and healthy 50-year-olds, I kept having flashbacks to my own bout of alcohol-induced amnesia. Yeah, that's right: "bout." It's only happened once!

I never stopped appreciating Julianne Moore as an actress, but it's been forever since I've loved her (circa 1999's Magnolia, to be completely honest). Still Alice reminds me of why I first fell for her (circa 1992's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, her second film) and why I first adored her in the first place (circa 1995's Safe). In some ways, Alice is Julianne coming full circle from Safe, playing another woman in the grips of a mystery illness. Once again, she nails that what-the-f**k-is-happening-to-me mix of fear and disbelief that accompanies gradually and inexplicably finding your health slipping away.

2. As someone whose personal and public identity is also closely tied to words and being able to use them well (Julianne's Alice character, Alice Howland, is a celebrated cognitive psychologist), I related to her situation in a way that made watching the movie more uncomfortable than it otherwise might have been. Initially pegging those strange symptoms as a brain tumor is exactly the conclusion I would have jumped to.

Perhaps that's why I found Alice so likable, though neither Julianne nor the script bend over backwards to make her so. It's interesting that for her, the greatest tragedy of the disease isn't losing touch with her loved ones but losing her mind. It's the less sentimental approach, but that Julianne managed to keep me perhaps even more invested in what was happening to Alice while periodically checking to make sure my own memory was still intact says as much about her acting skill as it does about where my own priorities lie.

3. It's easy to draw comparisons to Away from Her, the 2006 film in which Julie Christie played a woman losing her grip to Alzheimer's. Julie scored her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination for that movie, and it's almost a foregone conclusion that Still Alice will earn Julianne her third in that category. (It'll bring her nomination total to five overall.)

But there's a big difference between the two movies. Despite Julie's Best Actress status, Away focused mostly on the husband's point of view, to the film's detriment. Yes, it must be painful to not only slowly lose your wife to Alzheimer's but to also lose her to a fellow patient in a care facility. Still, you don't cast an actress like Julie Christie as the tortured lead in a film and then ask the audience to spend most of the movie focusing on someone else's agony. I believe that cost her the Oscar.

Sorry, Marion Cotillard, but Julie should have won. You may have been great in La vie en rose, but I have a problem with people winning Oscars for musical biopics in which they lip sync. (Sorry, Jamie Foxx. If What's Love Got to Do With It's Angela Bassett had lose to The Piano's Holly Hunter, you should have been congratulating Hotel Rwanda's Don Cheadle on Oscar night 2005.) On the plus side, Marion, I think you should be in the running this year for The Immigrant (but probably won't be as Oscar seems to be over you since that one-night stand), right alongside Julianne and Wild's Reese Witherspoon. She won her biopic Oscar the way God intended, by also singing the part of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line.

4. I wish the movie had looked more closely at Alice's marriage to John (Alec Baldwin), who kind of seems like an afterthought. It glosses over the fact that John, though supportive and loving, treats his wife's declining faculties mostly as an inconvenience. Maybe Alice meant to have a word with him about that but forget to. He was no what's-his-name from Amour!

Elsewhere, the strained family dynamics -- did sisters Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart) hate each other or what? -- made me glad that I never see most of my immediate kin. It's strange how so many of us force ourselves to be around people we really don't like just because we share a bloodline, a bloodline which, as Still Alice makes abundantly clear, could potentially kill you. I'd rather spend Christmas solo, thank you.

5. Kristen Stewart is blossoming into such an effective actress. She's come a long way since On the Road a couple of years ago, now holding her own with the great Julianne Moore. It would have been so easy for her to overplay the petulant in Alice's youngest daughter, but Kristen actually makes her the most likable of the three children.

Maybe that's the benefit of her having more screen time than Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish, but even at her brattiest, railing against Alice for reading her journal, Kristen lets us see flickers of Lydia's compassion, like she's just holding back the rage. That's a tough balancing act to pull off when the scenery must have been so tempting (chomp chomp).

Clearly Kristen learned a thing or two from the woman playing her mom. If she keeps it up, we might soon be seeing her name in the Oscar conversation. Why should Jennifer Lawrence keep getting all the twentysomething love?

7 New Things I've Learned About Sydney-siders Since Becoming One

1. They're all about their beaches. Sydney, we have a problem. First off, forget that American surfer aphorism. Life is not a beach. As someone who has never been a beach person, I can honestly say Sydney's celebrated shores have absolutely nothing to do with why I'm here.

Don't get me wrong: I love living near the ocean. But just knowing that it's there is enough for me. I don't actually have to splash around in it to appreciate it. And I can't think of anything I'd rather do less than bake under the hot sun. It's not like I ever look at a piece of meat sizzling in the oven and go, "Lucky!"

Though I live just one block away from Circular Quay, where the Sydney Opera House sits, and I take twice weekly runs along the water (and around the Botanical Garden), I've yet to step foot on a proper beach since moving here two months ago. In this beach-obsessed culture that gets me as many sideways glances as my American accent. It seems every time anyone tells me what they're doing, what they want to be doing or what they're going to be doing, a beach is involved. Sometimes I get so bored by the predictable script that I find myself daydreaming about life in a landlocked town. Oh, Jerusalem, where are you when I need you?

I've actually had people ask me why I live in Sydney if I'm not a beach person, as if there couldn't possibly be any other reason to live here. This makes me kind of sad, not because of what it says about Sydney, but because of what it says about those people. Life isn't a beach, and by making Sydney all about its sand and surf, they're shortchanging the city they're trying to sell.

The beach obsession is particularly curious because during my year in Cape Town, a city with some of the most spectacular beaches I've ever seen, the only people who talked about them were tourists. Locals always seemed to be busy doing other things. Ditto Melburnians. Sure St. Kilda is a bay beach, nowhere near the spectacle level of Sydney's water works, but I love Melbourne partly because I could go months there without any of my friends ever mentioning the beach.

2. They've got Christmas cheer to spare. This is my ninth Christmas living outside of the U.S. and my seventh non-consecutive one in the Southern Hemisphere. I'm as into Christmas as I'm into beaches, and it's even harder to get into the holiday spirit when the sun is shining and you're wearing shorts. In Bangkok, it was easier to ignore Christmas altogether because it's barely acknowledged there. That was one of the benefits of living in a Buddhist culture.

Buenos Aires is largely Catholic, but Christmas there is more about family traditions than carols and gifts. Everything went eerily silent on Christmas Eve while families bonded, and as soon as midnight struck, it was off to the clubs. BA business as usual had returned.

I spent but one Christmas in Cape Town, and since I can't recall anything about it, I'm assuming the holiday itself must have been pretty under the radar. Perhaps the country was still mourning the death of Nelson Mandela, who had passed only weeks earlier.

Sydney, though, is a completely different Christmas story. The holidays haven't made such a big splash anywhere I lived since New York City. There are Christmas decorations all over town, a Christmas tree on Martin's Place (the Aussie version of the Rockefeller Center tree), and I swear Christmas is the only thing anyone can talk about. Christmas at the beach (of course)! Woo hoo!

The excitement seems to be less about gift-giving than planning the perfect Christmas getaway. It's summer, after all, and there's no better time to get to Bali -- if insane travel crowds are your thing. The spirit hasn't been contagious in my direction, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the Aussie Christmas enthusiasm incredibly endearing. No Scrooges here -- and that can't possibly be a bad thing!

3. They're serious about their costume parties. Apparently, themed costume Christmas office parties are the thing here, with numerous "Christmas" stores in Sydney's CBD dedicated to the attire. That's why when I suited up as Captain America for my first Australian Christmas office party this past week, I was able to walk the 10 minutes from my apartment to the party venue alongside Catwoman, a mermaid and a magician and get shouts of appreciation but not a single strange look. That never would have happened in NYC, and I love Australia even more for it.

4. They're not big dancers. One of my colleagues asked me how office holiday parties in the U.S. are different, and the first thing that came to my mind after the costume thing was the dancing…or lack thereof. There was a little of it at Bar 100, but it was mostly a small group who created an impromptu dancing space underneath the DJ platform.

It was a lot different from all those People magazine Christmas parties I used to go to where the dance floor was the center of the action after the sit-down dinner. (Oh, no sit-down dinner the other night either.) There was always a proper dance floor, and by the end of the night it was pretty much filled with colleagues you never expected to see under the strobelight.

Bar 100 didn't have a dance floor (though it did have a short red carpet at the entrance), but come to think of it, I don't think I've even seen a dance floor anywhere since I arrived in Sydney.

5. Their sidewalk etiquette needs work. My friend Zena recently pointed out while visiting me in Sydney that she's never been in a city with more confusing sidewalk social norms…as in, there doesn't appear to be any. Do you walk on the left? Do you walk on the right? Nobody really seems to know. It doesn't help that everyone is too busy texting or talking on their phones to pay attention to where they're going or whom they're about to bump into. Walking through the CDB during weekday business hours might possibly be the most unpleasant part of living here.

6. They're hot and cold on their own stars. Apparently, the U.S. appreciates Aussie performers more than Australia does. They all flock to the U.S. to succeed, leaving TV presenters and reality stars to pick up the slack at home. Those are the real Australian celebrities, which I quickly learned while watching the action on the red carpet at the ARIAS a few weeks ago. One pair of MTV presenters went from being snapped on the red carpet to being banished to the other side of the rope to take their interviewing spot among the rest of the lowly press.

In perhaps the most shocking twist of the evening, when Guy Sebastian -- who is actually a bonafide celebrity Aussie entertainer -- showed up, the hoopla was cut short by the arrival of One Direction from the UK. Guy was quickly whisked off the red carpet, never to be seen again. The message: Who cares about their own when there's a superstar British boy band in the house? When Katy Perry (who along with 1D was the only act there with a substantial international following) finally showed up, she waltzed past the entire Aussie press without a word. She couldn't have been bothered. Kylie Minogue never would have done such a heinous thing, but then, I hear Aussies don't care much about Kylie these days. Who needs her when they've got all those reality stars to obsess over?

7. They're a lot more innocent than I thought. I learned more about Sydney-siders during Monday's so-called "Sydney siege" and its aftermath than during any other 48-hour period. One can't underplay the tragedy of any hostage situation that results in the loss of two lives (I refuse to consider the death of the gunman a "loss"). Although my Facebook news feed appeared to be more interested in D'Angelo's surprise album release (one person who clearly hadn't been paying attention to the news actually wrote "How can anyone talk about anything other than D'Angelo today?" as his status update), I was touched by the outpouring of grief among my fellow adopted countrymen, if not by the apparent indifference of many of my fellow Americans...at least online.

As someone who lived through September 11 in New York City, I found some of the sensationalist news coverage (Sydney was not under siege; there was an isolated hostage situation in a CBD cafe) and the public hysteria it spawned to be perplexing. Clear heads were not prevailing. An American friend who was here at the time put it perfectly: "Some commentator on Channel 7 just said it was like Independence Day, which is really quaint, I guess, since we both know what that's actually like."

Indeed.

For all of that hysteria, I was surprised to walk past Martin's Place that evening while the hostages were still captive and see scant police activity and no sign that a potentially deadly situation was in progress just meters away. For a few moments, until I went home and checked the news, I actually thought the "Sydney siege" was over. Sadly, it wasn't.

In the aftermath of those tragic murders, I was convinced that Sydney and Sydney-siders would never be the same. As someone whose city has been under attack (on September 11) and who has been attacked by an intruder in my own home, I am well aware of how one incident can change everything. Of all the headlines and commentary that I read and heard in the days after the stand-off, one statement rang particularly true: Australia has lost its innocence.

God help us all.

Sizing Up "Black Men": What Happens When the Story Is About Me?

For more years than I care to admit, I've been sticking my nose into other people's business. As a journalist, that's what I'm paid to do.

But what happens when the tables are turned and I find myself on the other side of the microscope lens? Now that I'm an author promoting Is It True What They Say About Black Men?, my first book, I'm getting to see how all of those celebrities I've spent decades interviewing have felt. Being interviewed and then reading my responses in print is not unlike hearing my voice on a tape recorder and being reminded each time that what I hear in my head and what I put out into the world are two very different things.

It's a slightly nerve-wracking source of anxiety (What if I sound even more ridiculous on the page than I do in my head?), but it's a welcome one. If I'm being interviewed about my book, it means that there are people out there who not only want to read it, but a few who want to talk about it and write about it, too. I don't think there's any greater gift a writer can receive -- unless they're counting royalties, of course, but this is a labor of love not the bottom line.

Last year I wrote a freelance article on the business side of Rihanna's brand for the South African magazine Destiny Man. A few months ago, after I sent my editor on that story a copy of my book, he asked if he could interview me for a Q&A feature in the magazine. It appears in the December issue, and there is also an excerpt from my book on the website. Click here to read the full Q&A.

Thoughts on Part 1 of the First Season of 'How to Get Away with Murder'

Annalise Keating is maddening. How does she frustrate me? Let me count the ways…

1. She's grumpy. She spends much of each episode of the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder in a foul mood.

2. She's a hypocrite. She blasts her white husband for screwing a white girl when she was doing the same with a hunky chocolate brother.

3. She's crooked. She not above breaking the rules -- and the law -- for the sake of winning a case, or saving her husband's ass, or her students', or her own.

4. She's a queen of artifice. For all her brutal candor, she's a bit of a fake. She's all steely armor, hiding behind a mask and under a wig that hides her fierce natural hair.

Annalise Keating might very well be the most infuriating woman who can be called the heroine of her own TV show right now.

But Annalise Keating, a defense attorney and law professor who's never encountered a rule she wouldn't bend, is played by Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis, which means it's impossible not to watch her. I can't take my eyes off her. I'd probably still be into How to Get Away with Murder if it was just one hour of tight shots of Viola's face.

The one scene that will probably secure her Emmy nomination next year is the one at the end of the fourth episode in which she removes her wig, pulls out her false eyelashes and wipes off all her make-up so that she's staring into the mirror, stark naked from the neck up. She then turns to her husband, and in a tone that's a mix of weary and threatening, she asks, "Why is your penis on a dead girl's phone?"

It's a shocking scene and not just because of the penis question. It's reminiscent of the sequence in the 1992 film Damage in which Miranda Richardson stands in front of Jeremy Irons totally nude and asks why she wasn't enough for him. Why did he have to have an affair with their son's girlfriend (Juliette Binoche), leading to the son's death? Miranda wouldn't have scored her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination without that one climactic scene, but Viola is lucky enough to have so many other riveting moments besides the one with the penis question.

She's naturally the main reason to watch How to Get Away with Murder. I keep wondering what the show would have been like had its creator Shonda Rimes hired another actress to take the role. There's so much loaded subtext in that penis scene -- what it says about masks, vulnerability and black female beauty. I can't imagine anyone other than Viola playing it so note-perfectly.

I also can't imagine anyone other than Viola playing Annalise so perfectly. If I close my eyes, I can picture someone like Alfre Woodward filling in for Viola in pretty much any of Viola's big-screen roles and doing each one justice. But I couldn't see anyone else, not even Alfre, pulling off Annalise. What if the character had been white? Would Annalise have worked so well, as a comeback vehicle for, say, Oscar winner Geena Davis? My answer: only if the show's other ingredients were stronger… a lot stronger.

The cracks in Murder show when its MVP isn't onscreen. The supporting cast that plays Annalise's students is capable enough, but aside from Connor, the gay student who has never met a guy he wouldn't screw to secure evidence, the characters are all fairly vanilla, straight out of Felicity.

That's not a color call. The two black students are the plainest ones of all. I love the hint of sexual-ish tension between Annalise and Wes (Alfred Enoch, overdoing the wide-eyed in his character's innocent and tilting his head too awkwardly), but that has everything to do with Viola. She could create sexual sparks with a chalk board.

I've found myself more involved in each case of the week than I am in the murder mystery that's the season-long story thread and the show's main hook. The fallout from that particular murder -- actually, the two murders -- is far more interesting than the whodunit aspect. I kind of haven't cared who killed either of the victims or why. I've been sticking around to watch Viola -- I mean, Annalise -- react to the latest bit of damning evidence against her husband, and to see what sexual/social taboo Connor (Jack Falahee, growing on me more each episode) can shutter next.

My favorite scene of the entire series so far was probably the episode-nine showdown between Annalise and her husband Sam (Tom Verica, a good actor who can convincingly switch from staid and stand-up to calculating and creepy to vile and dangerous in a matter of moments). When Sam tells Annalise that she was always just a piece of ass to him, it speaks some uncomfortable and unfortunate truths about the nature of many interracial relationships. Cheers to the script for actually going there rather than white-washing things.

Cheers to Rimes for creating such vibrant, riveting and complex portraits of both black female sexuality and gay male sexuality. Television hasn't offered nearly enough of either. Some might argue that Connor is a dangerously negative representation of gay male sexuality, but anyone who lives in the real world or has logged on to Grindr realizes that his behavior, though exaggerated, is hardly unfathomable. If a female character can use sex to get what she wants, why can't a gay man play the femme fatale role for once?

When the show returns after the winter break, I'll be tuning in not to find out what happens next. I'll be tuning in to see what Viola does next, to see whom Connor screws next, and to see if they ever let Annalise permanently lose that wig so that Viola can be the beautiful natural black woman she was born to be onscreen. I love the show for at least giving us glimpses of her.

Reflections on Throwback/Coming-Out Thursday with Ty Herndon and Billy Gilman

It's been such a gay week. In some ways, it feels like my career suddenly came full circle, and it had everything to do with Thursday's coming-out announcements of two retro country stars, Ty Herndon and Billy Gilman.

I'll get to why in a moment, but first, let me just say, what perfect timing! A day or two before Ty and Billy both came out, I turned in my latest Huffington Post essay. Title: "Why I Hope One Direction's Harry Styles Is Really Straight."

Also, there's the gay-country-singer-with-a-bratty-but-(surprisingly) talented- wife storyline on the ABC nighttime soap Nashville. It's currently my favorite arc on the show, and it's the most timely one, too, with the reality-TV angle and all. Too bad it's spent most of each episode on the backburner this season.

It's such a perfect cautionary tale about the dangers of being gay in country music. It hurts my soul that the first music l genre I ever loved, one that has been a part of my life for as long as I've been able to mangle a tune, doesn't have much use for me or my kind.

The reason why Ty's and Billy's coming outs make me feel as if my career has come full circle, though, has nothing to do with a fictional prime-time character or homophobia in country music. It has everything to do with how both Ty and Billy factored into my career at key stages in it.

One of the most memorable stories I worked on during my early years as a staff reporter at People magazine was the one we did on Ty Herndon's arrest for allegedly soliciting sex from a male undercover cop. At the time, I remember wishing that the implications of the story might be true. I so wanted Ty to just come out already.

It had nothing to do with political or social concerns. I was in my early 20s at the time, and when it came to sexuality, I didn't really think much about the world outside my bedroom. Not yet. I wanted Ty to be gay because I secretly fantasized about going to Nashville to interview him, falling in love and living happily ever after with one of the hunkiest guys on the country charts. It seems pretty silly now that I look back on it, but I've always had a weakness for that slow southern style, and it's not like country music was overflowing with eye-candy bachelors who were eligible for me.

While I firmly believe we all should have complete control over when we come out, and yes, better late than never, I'm going to hold my applause for Ty -- or keep it muted. It's disappointing that he had to wait until age 52 to publicly declare himself "an out, proud and happy gay man."

It's a shame that he had to go through two marriages to women. It's too bad he had to spend as much time as he did living behind a curtain, though from what I've read, he's been pretty much out in his private life for a while. He says he realized that he had an important story to share five years ago, so why did it take him five years to share it?

I'd be more likely to extol his courage if he were still in his commercial heyday and therefore was risking a hot career by publicly coming out. As it is, Ty's chart peak is nearly two decades behind him. So when he made his announcement, ironically enough, in People magazine, my old alma mater (like I said, full circle), I was more impressed by how great he looks than by his belated coming out. Sadly, I still don't have a shot with him. He's taken.

I never had any designs on Billy Gilman. After all, I met him when I was an editor at Teen People, and he was only 12. I'll never forget the time he visited the Teen People offices with his publicist and mom. He was such a sweet, chatty tween. Before he treated my colleagues and me to a live performance of his then-hit "One Voice," he spent some time hanging out with the entertainment department.

Two things about Billy stand out in my mind to this day. First of all, he was obsessed with the movie Arthur, which I found pretty odd for a 12 year old. Dudley Moore was never a tween sensation, and the movie was released nearly a decade before Billy was born. I was surprised he didn't belt out the chorus from "Arthur's Theme" right then and there.

The second thing that stood out was how he took an immediate and particular liking to me. At the end of the visit, he even invited me to a Broadway performance of Reba McEntire in Annie Get Your Gun that he was going to that evening. I politely declined because as nice a kid as he was, I wasn't really interested in socializing with a 12 year old. When he left, my colleagues joked that the little boy had asked me out.

I think we were all pretty sure Billy would turn out to be gay. I'm not saying that Billy knew he was gay back then, or suggesting that he secretly wanted me. What I am saying is that he must have known a kindred spirit when he saw one.

Although Billy credited Ty Herndon with giving him the courage to come out, I love that he did it a quarter of a century earlier, so to speak. I also love that like a true post-millennial, he didn't release a public statement through his publicist but rather came out via a YouTube video. I also love that he referred to his boyfriend of five months as his "partner."

I know. That's so 26. But it confirms something else I suspected when he was 12. I always had a feeling he'd grow up to be a great guy and an unjaded romantic. Welcome to the party, Billy.

10 of My "Favorite" Things: ABBA to John Lennon

What's your favorite song by [insert popular band/singer] here?

As ice-breaking music-related questions go, I actually like that one more than my long-time standard: What are your Top 3 favorite bands/singers of all-time. For one thing, I tend to find the specifics of someone's taste (favorite songs, movies, cities, etc.) to be far more revealing than more general preferences (favorite singers, actors, countries, etc.).

An example: When I recently posed my Top 3 question to someone, his inclusion of Prince didn't say nearly as much about him as when he later named Purple Rain as his all-time favorite movie. His cool cred suddenly skyrocketed.

For another thing, as long as you stick to popular artists with massive discographies, everyone is likely to have an opinion.

Or so it seems every time my Facebook friend Dan J Kroll poses another "$2.99/gallon KROLLSTION" (that's Kroll + question). His latest one was Lionel Richie themed. To make things more interesting, Dan allowed Richie songs, tunes by his old band, The Commodores, and Richie compositions for other artists, like Kenny Rogers' No. 1 smash "Lady".

My picks: "Zoom" (The Commodores), "Love Will Conquer All" (solo) and "We Are the World" (songwriting -- but mainly for the Ray Charles parts). Had I been able to pick from songs that Richie produced but didn't write, Rogers' "I Don't Need You" would have been my one and only choice. I may not love it quite as much as I do "Lucille" or "Love Or Something Like It," but at this very moment, I'd rather listen to "I Don't Need You" than anything Richie ever wrote or sang, with or without The Commodores.

Inspired by the Lionel Richie-themed KROLLSTION, I've decided to do a mix-tape blog post featuring my favorite songs by 10 of my favorite bands/singers, A to J.

How can I possibly choose one song when there are so many great ones by each act? I think of it this way: If I were on my death bed, and I was told that I could hear one song only by each act before I die, which track would it be? A morbid thought, yes, but at least I'd kick the bucket with a kick-ass soundtrack.

ABBA: "When All Is Said and Done" On a different day, it very well could be "Waterloo" or "Take a Chance on Me" or "Voulez-Vous". But on most days, it would be ABBA's final U.S. Top 40 hit, possibly because it's one of the group's few singles that haven't been overplayed to death in the various ABBA revivals over the decades.

Billy Joel: "The Longest Time" We all know Joel is an excellent songwriter, but for me, this is the one song that proves without a doubt what an amazing singer he was during his peak years. And he performed it entirely a cappella. Those impossibly high notes at the end still give me the goose-bumpy chills.

Chicago: "Old Days" Chicago doesn't get enough credit for being musically daring. Aside from probably Three Dog Night, I can't think of another band from Chicago's creative-peak era (1969's "Questions 67 and 68" to 1976's "If You Leave Me Now," which kicked off the band's still-musically remarkable but considerably more predictable era of Peter Cetera-sung mellow ballads) that offered so many singles that were so distinct and un-cookie-cutter. "Old Days" might not be the best one, but it's the one most likely to make me press "repeat" because its ever-changing mood always makes me think I've missed something. As the clip below shows, even a band as great as Chicago and a singer as skilled as Cetera struggled to recreate the complex and intricate sound of the single live.

Depeche Mode: "Barrel of a Gun" Normally I would have gone with David Bowie (and "Sound and Vision," of course) or, like a recent KROLLSTION, Donna Summer (and "The Wanderer" or "Lucky") for "D," but I was just raving about "Barrel" to my friend Dov (speaking of D's) on a straight tequila night. The video is everything, one of my all-time favorites, and it's a large part of why I've never been able to get enough of this song for more than 17 years. Still, even without the odd clip, this still would deserve a spot in the band's pantheon of greatness.

Electric Light Orchestra: "Telephone Line" I'm a sucker for a fairly mainstream band going Top 10 with a strange-as-fuck-song. Will someone please tell me when ELO, The Moody Blues and The Steve Miller Band will finally get nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We're already onto '90s acts like Green Day and these seminal bands from the '60s to the '80s have yet to score even a measly nomination.

Fleetwood Mac: "Tusk" See above. Though Christine McVie has always been my favorite FM vocalist ("Think About You" would probably be No. 2), and Stevie Nicks my favorite FM solo act, Lindsey Buckingham actually sang/wrote more of my favorite FM songs. Honorable Lindsey-sung/penned mentions: "The Chain," "Walk a Thin Line," "Empire State" and "Big Love".

Grace Jones: "My Jamaican Guy" Too bad I didn't know this song back when I was a kid and certain people would erroneously peg me as being from Jamaica and mean it as an insult. Now Jones's classic makes me prouder to be a Caribbean queen than Billy Ocean ever did.

Hall and Oates: "Sara Smile" As huge a fan as I am of Daryl Hall and John Oates in the '80s, nothing they did that decade -- not "One on One," not "Say It Isn't So," not "Out of Touch" -- can touch the sublime timelessness of the duo's breakthrough hit from 1976.

INXS: "Heaven Sent" At a mere 3:18, proof that size doesn't always matter. Sometimes the best things come in unusually short packages.

John Lennon: "#9 Dream" Look, I'll probably never live this down, but Lennon was never my favorite solo Beatle. That honor would go to Paul McCartney. Lennon wasn't even my second favorite. That honor would go to George Harrison. And neither McCartney nor Harrison nor Lennon recorded what is my favorite solo-Beatle single. That honor would go to Ringo Starr, whose "Photograph" I'd rather listen to over and over and over than any Beatles song I can think of. But in a solo career that wowed me intermittently and, from "Just Like Starting Over" to "Nobody Told Me," consistently (albeit posthumously), "#9 Dream" probably would always be the last Lennon song I'd want to hear. Doesn't it actually sound like something Harrison would have done around the same time?

Rose McGowan Needs to Brush Up on Her Gay Culture!

Clearly Rose McGowan has never met a gay man.

How else to explain her having the audacity to make a comment as preposterous as this one: "Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so. I have an indictment of the gay community right now, I'm actually really upset with them"?

Well, guess what, Rose: Most of us probably never gave you a second thought before, but now the feelings are entirely mutual.

The unenlightened actress made the comment to author Bret Easton Ellis (of course!) in a podcast last month. Then she went even further, taking gay men to task for not mobilizing politically in support of women's rights around the world. Hmm... And what exactly have straight men collectively done for the female cause lately?

The biggest problem with McGowan's comments is that they completely ignore the fact that women are such a huge part of gay culture. Drag queens are basically an over-the-top celebration of women, and gay entertainment revolves around female artists, from dance divas to pop divas to R&B divas to Broadway divas to soap divas to our obsession with Oscar-caliber actresses. (It's all about actresses.) Every single one of our icons from the beginning of time has been a women. What's so misogynistic about that?

McGowan did make one decent point when she mentioned an unfortunate tendency of oppressed groups to ignore the plights of other oppressed groups. I've seen it in the way some gay men disregard minority gay men, in the way some blacks dismiss gays, and in the way many women treat other women. But I don't think the gay movement has to simultaneously be a women's movement to not be anti-women. And for her to say that gay men have most of what they've fought for shows how little she knows.

It sounds to me like McGowan was grasping at straws, trying to justify throwing a party at the Brunei-owned Beverly Hills Hotel. Brunei is notorious for its anti-gay laws, but that's no problem since, in McGowan's eyes, gay men hate women. We deserve to be stoned to death. I wonder if she's checked Brunei's record on women's rights.

She'd be way better off in a gay club. If any of them would welcome her after spouting such misguided drivel.

Ill Communication: If You Want to Make Me Nauseous, Say or Write These 10 Things

Griping about things I wish people wouldn't say (or write) never gets old, or irrelevant (because people keep saying -- and writing -- them), so here we go again. Today's Top 10 conversational pet peeves:

1) "Everyone's entitled to their opinion." Um, duh.

2) "Let's agree to disagree." A true cop-out by someone who doesn't have a wobbly leg to stand on.

3) "a fresh start" The past always comes back to haunt, especially when one of you gets mad.

4) "Deal with it." So dismissive, so nasty.

5) "She's had (a lot of) work done." This cosmetic-surgery/Botox shaming has got to stop. Does Renée Zellweger's face shock us because it looks different or because we think it wasn't just the handiwork of time? Who cares? She looks great.

Who cares if current General Hospital star Donna Mills, 73, has her (excellent!) plastic surgeon to thank for not looking a day older than she did when Knot's Landing ended in 1993? If she looked her age, we'd be slamming her for that, too.

Are make-up, wigs, hair extensions and highlights more authentic agents of attractiveness than nips and tucks? Do they make Beyoncé (at least the one we see on stage, in videos, on red carpets and in publicity photos) more real than Renée? In episodes four and five of How to Get Away with Murder, Viola Davis showed us how what we see is rarely what we get with women in Hollywood, nor do they generally wake up like that, despite what Beyoncé sings.

Constantly putting women on the defensive for pursuing an airbrushed standard (forever youthfulness and impossible beauty) is like punishing them for following the rules that society set. If you don't have something nice to say, then just don't say anything when someone else does.

6) #Anythingwithahashtaginfrontofit. I'm not just annoyed with hashtags because I'm still not sure what they do. I'm annoyed with them mostly because they symbolize a society of communicators who believe words are useless, especially sentences (of 140 characters or less), unless they're "liked" and "retweeted" by the masses. Even condolences are offered with "reach" in mind. "RIP" and a hashtag should never be in the same vicinity!

7) "[Insert absolutely "amazing" thing here] is giving me life." What I used to say -- "I'm living for [insert absolutely "amazing" thing here]" -- was kind of the same thing, but then, hardly anybody else used to say that. Along with other stale staples of blogosphere-speak -- like "Co-sign," "Fail" and "Epic fail" -- it was probably clever when one or two bloggers or blog commenters used it, but now it just comes across as hackneyed and bandwagonesque.

8) "Let's grab a drink/dinner sometime." I get what people who say this are trying to do (make an invitation sound as casual as humanly possible), but I can never shake the image of crying over spilled vodka or picking up chicken parma off the floor, for who "grabs" a drink or dinner without making a total mess?

9) "What did you do today?" One of the best things about starting a new job on Monday is that people will no longer ask me this unless it's the weekend.

10) "Brekkie" I adore Aussie-isms ("buddy," "mate," "heaps" and "nah," "tomoz" for tomorrow, "arvo" for "afternoon," "How are you going?" for "How are you doing?" and "as" in lieu of an exclamation point, as in "Hot as" for "Hot!"). They're giving me life (wink wink) as I settle into my new city. But what's the point of shortening a word ("breakfast") to something with just as many syllables ("brekkie")? Plus, "brekkie" doesn't sound particularly palatable, especially not first thing in the morning.

Lost in Sydney: Is This Really My New Home?

Not lost "lost," so don't bother trying to offer me directions. It's not like I don't know my way around here (or can't figure it out on my own, for inner Sydney is fairly user-with-a-map friendly). Yesterday's landing at Sydney International was my eighth one in the city, which couldn't have looked more gorgeous from eight miles high (or wherever we were when we were no longer flying above the clouds). But I think it started before I went up, up and away in Qantas flight 64 from Johannesburg to Sydney.

My final hours on the ground in South Africa (two in Cape Town, two in Johannesburg) were imperfect caps to my last year abroad, so fraught with inconveniences that they seemed to be screaming "Get out while you can!" (..."and don't come back!" -- which is a twist for a future blog post once I make more sense of it) while confirming what has become my No. 1 travel truth: The worst parts of any long-distance voyage are the parts spent in airports.

The waiting isn't the hardest part of that part, though. It's dealing with airport speed bumps post-9/11: rigorously enforced weight restrictions (If I book a two-leg flight on Qantas.com, and Qantas uses a partner airline for the first leg, shouldn't Qantas arrange for me to have the same weight limit on both flights?), baggage checks (I'm still not sure what airport security has against liquids), and customs (a necessary evil that's still a pain in the ass). The latter was never actually a problem for me until I left South Africa this time, six days after my visa expired, which, again, is a story for another blog post.

Thankfully, my arrival/welcome in Sydney was smoother than my departure from South Africa. Although Australia's border patrol has a reputation for being extra-vigilant and strict (and it has its own TV series to document/show for it), in the dozen or so times I've entered the country, I've only once had an Immigration problem (the first time, as I didn't enter my middle name on my ETA visa application, making the ETA me, in essence, a different person than the me named in my passport), and I've never had my baggage inspected. That's probably not the reason why I click with the country and the people in it, but it's never a bad start.

So why have I felt so out of sorts since my latest arrival? Was it because of the gloomy overcast skies and the autumn-like spring chill that greeted me? I overheard a woman on the shuttle bus into the city complaining about how she didn't have to leave London to get such grim weather. Another compared it to Melbourne's notoriously capricious climate, citing the "four seasons in a day" cliché. For a moment, I found myself wishing I could be somewhere else: in London, in Melbourne, in a taxi. But I've been so looking forward to Sydney for weeks. I should barely be able to contain my glee.

Perhaps the reason for my continuing malaise is that I left South Africa, my home for the past 11 and a half months, under less-than-stellar conditions, but I feel like I'm already moving past that. God knows it's not my living arrangements in Sydney. My accommodation for the next three months is certainly welcoming enough, even without some of the necessities (towels, bed linings, toilet paper) that I might have expected to find in a furnished one-bedroom executive rental which is costing me more than twice what I paid per month for my apartment in Cape Town. (Aside from views of Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, Lion's Head and Signal Hill, it's the one thing I'll miss most about Cape Town).

On my way to a store to buy a towel to dry off with after washing myself clean of the grime my body had accumulated over 14 hours of air travel and several more of airport drama, I discovered that I live only a few blocks away from my new job at ninemsn, which will make the work commute my easiest ever and my temporary CBD address convenient, if not ideal on a social level. And I was immediately reminded of the unpredictable but excellent Aussie taste in music. The first two songs I heard in public after landing: "Best Friend" by Foster the People, which was playing over the loudspeaker en route to the customs and baggage claim area at the airport, and "To Know Him Is to Love Him," the 1987 No. 1 country hit by Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt that was blaring from the radio at the 24-hour convenience store near my new home.

I think there may be a couple of key contributing factors to this peaceful but slightly uneasy feeling that's been washing over me since I woke up mid-flight from Johannesburg to Sydney somewhat panicked. For one, I'm about to start a new job (which, in itself, is generally a cause for some trepidation), one that will mark the first time I've been tied to a 9-to-5 gig in more than eight years. I'd better make it work. I'm a perfectionist that way, and the terms of my 48-month 457 visa demand it. The pressure is on.

For two, there's my social standing in Sydney, or rather, lack thereof. The last time I arrived in Australia thinking long-term (in March of 2011), it was under considerably different circumstances. I was arriving in Melbourne, my first Australian love, and my second Australian love (my boyfriend-to-be) was waiting for me. I've never been one to move to a new country or city for love and can't imagine myself ever being motivated to do so, but I now fully understand how having a human connection awaiting you on the other side of a relocation can make all the difference. The job may, for the first time, give me a legitimate reason to be in Australia, but reclusive as I am, I've always been driven mostly by human connections.

Thankfully, I'm now in a place where it should be a lot easier to make them. I spent most of the last year mostly on my own, partly by choice, but partly because South Africa's social fabric, particularly in Cape Town, is so difficult to penetrate. The local gay scene is even tougher. Before I left, I hadn't been on a date in at least three months, which may have had something to do with my rare excursions into the nightlife and my temporary departure from the Grindr dating pool. One's skin color can be the hot topic for only so long before one begins to feel even more self-conscious than usual about it. Who needs that?

As valuable as the lessons learned in Cape Town were (and I got an entire second book out of them), I'm looking forward to living in world where the racial politics don't really apply to me. (As a black American, I've never felt more accepted than I have in Australia.) I know that eventually my diffidence will pass. Like jetlag -- killer, as usual -- it always does, leading to bright new (and hopefully, sunnier) days.